1.When using the selection box (left to right) only entities completely within the boundaries of that box will become selected.See snapshots 1 and 2.2. When using the 'Cross' selection box (from right to left) everything within the 'cross' selection box will become selected resulting even in an entire entity becoming selected even if only part of that entity is in the boundaries of the box (hope that makes sense )See snapshots 3 and 4.* Note: a good example of this is when selecting a shape (e.g. rectangle) which is one complete entity drawn with a polyline, when using the selection box (left to right) the whole polyline needs to be in the box, however if using the cross (from right to left) selection box method only a part of the polyline needs to be selected.

Removing from a selection using the selection box and shift cannot work for a logical reason:

If you would use the rectangle selection tool over a number of entities (some selected, some not) the tool cannot know if it is supposed to add the entities to the selection or remove them from the selection. It requires more user input to decide that.

Single entity selection does not have that problem since the clicked entity is selected if it was not already selected and otherwise deselected.

To have more control over the rectangle selection tool, please use the specialized tool in the selection tool group instead. It allows you to choose the desired selection mode in the options tool bar at the top (replace selection, add to selection, remove from selection, intersect with selection).

andrew wrote:Removing from a selection using the selection box and shift cannot work for a logical reason:

If you would use the rectangle selection tool over a number of entities (some selected, some not) the tool cannot know if it is supposed to add the entities to the selection or remove them from the selection. It requires more user input to decide that.

Sorry Andrew but I have to disagree. Is this the case for QCad I have to accept that but it is a normal function in Windows OS's and many Programs what consequently brings me to the point that it can't be a general logical reason!Also - it is for QCad logical to expand a single selection with the Shift key and a mouse click and it is for QCad absolute logical to de-select an element if it is already selected.But with a selection rectangle and a shift key it can't work for a logical reason .... is that not based on the same Feedback like the single (de)selection?

It is the daily procedure to work in Windows with shift or Ctrl (Strg) to make selection with mouse or boxes and it is not a problem for windows to recognized "selected" or not "selected" to reverse the selection with a Box over function in one step. And it doesn't need more input - you can do it with the mouse + a shift or a Ctrl Key. Just test it on a Windows Desktop - select every second Folder - and use a Selection Box with pressed Ctrl Key ....Yes, you are right that we haven't spoken about the Ctrl Key but this one is already reserved in QCad for the Pan Function, right?

husky: I probably misunderstood. If I understand you now correctly (perfectly possible that I still don't ):

What you expect is that the selection box tool, when used with the Shift-key pressed selects all not selected entities inside the box and deselects all selected entities (i.e. inverts the selection inside the box). Is that correct? See also attached example (above before / while using the selection box tool with Shift pressed, below after).

1. You can indeed select entities by 'dragging' a window either from left to right using a Selection Box or 'dragging' a window from right to left by using a 'cross' selection box as already discussed.

2.You can indeed select entities or un-select entities 'manually' by using the shift key and clicking on them.

3. However the 'specialised' selection tool set is by far the better way of selecting entities, particularly when you have a very complex or large draft, to clarify here - you cannot use the 'shift' key in the same way as described in point 2. above when using this tool-set, there is a reason for this, quite simply to give you precise control to add, subtract, replace and intersect with current selections.Using the specific tools in the selection tool-set will give you a much more controlled way of selecting a wider range of entities!Imagine you have a very complex drawing - it would take you a long time in some cases to 'manually' select or de-select things just by using the 'shift' key, of course you could do this on a smaller drawing.- In the snapshot below you can see that I have used the 'Select Rectangular Area' form the specific selection tool-set, now I cannot use the shift key and within this tool-set I now have a much wider range of options to use!

I'm trying to figure out what is 'standard behavior' for using Shift with box selection, and there seem to be three camps:- Some applications only add to the current selection with Shift-box and never remove anything from the selection (like QCAD): OpenOffice Draw, Inkscape, iPhoto- Other applications invert the selection with Shift-box (as suggested by Husky): Mac OS X Desktop (Finder), Windows Desktop (Explorer)- Finally, Autocad only removes from the selection with Shift-box (and by default adds to selection when using the box tool without Shift)